Winter/Spring 2015

                   —Holiday Beach Raceway

Calvin speaks machine with his chrome-drunk daddy
over the idle of a Slant-6, hood up
until she gurgles her permission,
they grin, and I am not
born of grease, or a father who shines
my eye. Only happened once, Calvin says.
My father is a Cool Hand Luke
whose son cries about a sniffle,
who greets his woman with a slow strut,
soft buckle of his body into hers. The women here
stand spaghetti strapped and tube-topped,
often bruised, daydreaming television finales,
wherein the father kisses the mother
and thanks her for the children they have,
for the meatloaf. Tonight Calvin and me
chew turbine for conversation,
while a gear head under the bleachers
slow-talks himself into a girl he just met.
The ringleader calls over the microphone,
Calvin screams for his daddy, I rub both hands,
and the girl beneath the bleachers is in love.
She shivers and moans in short heaves,
same as the ’66 Camaro, the ’67 Barracuda,
ready to goddamn everything on a green light.
My father whispers into mother’s ear again, and here
all the devils are roaring at once, all metallic and gasoline.